Conveyor lines for bottles normally have rails positioned along opposite sides of the line in order to prevent the bottles from falling away from the moving conveyor belt. The side rails are disposed on opposite sides of the conveyor belt and the bottles travel between the fixed rails. When a conveyor line is converted to transport bottles of different size, the conventional method for adjusting the spacing of the side rails depends on the skills of the mechanics to avoid maladjustment.
Adjustable mounts for the side rails are conventional, but the need for precise adjustment of the side rails after changing their position has made such adjustments subject to mechanic error.
A proposal to eliminate mechanic error is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,492,218 issued Feb. 20, 1996, wherein the rails are supported by a horizontal support post slidable in a fixed horizontal sleeve. The support post has a rail clamp at one end which projects beyond the inner end of the sleeve toward the conveyor line. The post is biased outwardly away from the conveyor line by a spring mounted within the sleeve, and the position of the side rail is determined by placing a spacer around the projecting end of the support post between the inner end of the sleeve and the inner end of the post which mounts the clamp. The rails are clamped by a series of posts which are all mounted in sleeves which are secured to the frame of the machine so that their inner ends are equidistant from the conveyor line. Each post is provided with a spacer to determine the desired position of the rail relative to the centerline of the conveyor line. When it is desired to change the position of the rails, all of the spacers must be replaced with different spacer which establish the new position of the rail.
Although proper use of spacers avoids mechanic errors, it has been found that spacers are lost when exchanging spacers, and where the change in spacing is not large, the wrong spacers may be substituted.